Neville's Island
by Gojirob
Summary: After the great battle at Hogwarts, Neville makes a regular visit. But when two people do something they should not be able to do, he finds support and opposition in the oddest places. Is he making a mountain out of a molehill? Maybe. But with the qualified support of the Trio, he will learn the truth. He will need the strength he has gained over the years.
1. Chapter 1

Neville's Island  
by Rob Morris

_Prologue - I Hope You Have The Time Of Your Life  
_  
**1998, The Ruin That Was Hogwarts (And Would Once Again Be)  
**  
The great hero walked among the victory celebration that he had purchased with his persistence and bravery.

"I'm afraid I don't know where they've gotten to."

He was answering a lot of questions.

"I can't call it for bravery. I just wanted all of it to be done with, and that seemed the way. The rest followed from there."

A lot of questions.

"No, really. I would give all of the credit to the others. Just being around them made me better, if only to keep up."

He was starting to get annoyed.

"Me and...Luna? She's a nice person, of course. Pretty, sure. But I can't see it."

Really annoyed.

"Yes, she sent me a Howler during early Second Year, but it's not a matter I care to discuss. Now, if you wouldn't mind..."

Fortunately, before the next question could set him off, the milling mob of anxious students saw three lights.

"It's them!"

Neville was actually relieved to see Harry, Hermione and Ron, and did not feel a bit like his thunder had been stolen. It was an unwanted thunder after all, and he felt like it might wreck his hearing and sanity if it went on.

"Oh? We just had my House-Elf fetch us some sandwiches. Wouldn't do to survive all that, then starve to death!"

Harry's answer to the crowd seemed too pat to Longbottom. Then again, he now fully understood why the man despised that whole hero business. Just a day or so after his slaying Nagini had him under a scrutiny that was not always pleasant, and often ranged into the hugely uncomfortable.

_*But where were those three for the last six hours?*_

No, not three, he realized, as he saw Ginny Weasley dart away from her family and allies. Wherever they had been, Ron's sister had been with them.

"Neville? A favor?"

Ginny had in fact darted right up to him.

"Anything, you know that."

She looked about. The Trio had all the attention in the room, more than even a properly-cast Masto Imperius could have given them.

"Should anyone ask...especially my parents...you saw me duck behind the fallen shelves in the Library, loudly proclaiming my intent to take a nap, after Harry and I had argued. Got all that?"

Her face was a mix of pleas, demands and implied threats.

"Ginny, where were you? I mean, you come back, everyone with hair as far off as Harry's, looking like you'd put on your robes in a huge hurry..."

Neville stopped dead in his tracks as the realization struck home. He understood the emotions of a war finally won, even if certain laws said that one can be too young for such a choice.

"You won't tell?"

"Your Mother or Ron?"

"My Mother, but also my Father. I can't say who'd take it worse-yes I can. He'd only faint. As for Ron-well, obviously, we found separate accommodations, but, just before, he looked at a man who is like his own brother, pointed his wand, and said 'You Marry Her, All Right?' before leaving with Hermione."

She smiled.

"Harry responded by saying that I was the only one who could stop that."

Neville made a mental promise then and there to absolutely haunt any teen daughters he might ever have until they were twelve days past of age. But he knew the maturity and strength of this witch, and put his approval or disapproval aside.

"So? Will you stop that?"

Ginny caught distant sight of her mother, and decided to re-enter the room from another angle to keep up appearances and keep herself from a fate that might make her envy the late Bellatrix Lestrange.

"What do you think? And Thanks, Neville."

Mrs. Weasley did not see her daughter stage a new entrance, and greeted her warmly as always. Neville would not have to play cover story for his friends, and he was grateful in that. Should the lie be uncovered, the thought of Molly Weasley and his own grandmother cornering him made him cringe.

"Neville?"

His grandmother had not snuck up on him, though he found that his recent thought-fantasy ended not with him cowering, but rather upset.

"Gran? Is it time already?"

Her smile was tender, and showed the pride she now felt openly. For all that, Neville still felt the upset, felt untoward words rising in his throat. They hadn't risen yet, though.

"It is-if you can tear yourself away from your admirers!"

"I can-this is more important to me than ever."

Her smile didn't leave, but it did become mitigated on her face.

"When was this not important to you?"

Like that, he was once more all of twelve, watching in terror as a floating envelope built to an inevitable explosion while the school's *other* trio snickered and guffawed up a storm. Yet on this occasion, the boy remembered that of that alternate trio, one was in prison, one might be facing it, and the other had died rather poorly. He also remembered that the scared little boy of twelve years was, if anything, more dead than that. The boy rose as a man who waved his wand with a disdainful flourish worthy of Snape himself and dispersed the Howler with extreme prejudice.

"Gran, it's always been important to me. Don't think it hasn't."

Augusta Longbottom seemed not to catch the annoyance in her grandson's voice.

"Well, you raised the emphasis, dear."

Since this fight was the last thing he wanted, Neville walked down his tone subtly.

"I...just meant that all things I hold dear are more important to me, now that we've had a chance to stand down for real this time."

That was the end of the conversation, but the upset was a bee in Neville's bonnet. He needed a friendly face, and the first real defender he'd ever had stood at the ready.

"Well, rather than let it get that far, why not just speak plain to her? Grandson to Grandmother, Truth To Power."

"Would that have settled issues with you and your uncle?"

Harry Potter was just glad to talk with a peer, and he showed this in his whole being.

"Nothing will settle those issues. My Aunt-maybe someday. My cousin-we're actually good. You know, she did pay you huge compliments as she joined us."

"I'd heard that. I'd like to be present as she pays them."

Harry laughed.

"The light in the icebox, eh?"

Neville stared at him, and Potter realized his cultural error.

"Never mind. I know what you meant. But that may not be in her."

A fact Neville knew as such, but he still wanted what he wanted.

"Harry? I talked with Ginny, after the four of you got back."

Neville looked him in the eye and shook his head.

"Man, be careful. Not just for her Mother, but for yourselves."

Potter shrugged.

"I aim to be. We drew a line between us on that matter, and until we're past the giddy-to-be-alive stage, on all other matters as well. I'm not stupid, Neville, but I'm feeling very stupid right now. Like portions of my brain have just shut off."

"Shouldn't you be saying this to Ron, since he knows?"

"Kind of problematic, don't you think?"

Neville conceded that one without further comment.

"Well, as to your brain, it has been up and on for like, seven years, on high alert with interrupted sleep. Maybe it needs the break. If I were you, I'd just rouse it occasionally for advice-if only on certain statutory age restrictions."

Harry seconded Neville's silent concession with his own.

"What will you do?"

Neville knew that it was a great time to get going. Any more sidebars were apt to damp down his enthusiasm.

"I'm going to see my parents, Harry-like I do at the end of every term. And if anyone asks, you tell them exactly that-and why that means what it does. I'm tired of hiding it. I'm proud of them-as proud as you are of yours."

Harry looked like he wanted to say something, and Neville caught this.

"This isn't about the statue in Godric's Hollow again, is it?"

Potter gained a relieved look that Longbottom misread.

"Was I going to go into all that again?"

"Harry-you're happy that they're remembered. I could never resent that-unless you tell that story again-and if Ron doesn't beat me to the strangle."

They laughed and parted ways, but as Potter turned away, it was clear that he had meant to say something else. Longbottom for his part made his way out of Hogwarts, past the barrier against disapparation-if it even still worked anymore. McGonagall had been clear that certain things at the school would never be the same again. A man more confident about himself than he could have once believed vanished and then reappeared in front of St. Mungo's, and he would relish a visit he once actively dreaded.

"Mum? Dad? I'm Home."

He had always also dreaded this place becoming his true home, with people tsking the boy who went mad and was kept in with his mother and father. Yet on this day, he almost ran to see them, stopping only to change his clothes. Though their distant minds would never directly hear him, he wanted to tell them the good news.

_*Bellatrix is dead. As that cinema of Harry's said, a house was dropped on her. The House Of Weasley*_

More than that, the soulless Barty Crouch, Junior had died in Azkaban, mere hours after his partner and their Master. His parents had been fully avenged, to a one.

The staff all knew him, and had a chair-bed set up for him in his parents' ward-it really was like his home, and this time, he didn't mind it. He had a bag chock full of Herbology periodicals Sprout had been set to throw out, so he would have things to read. He told his news, and as expected, their reactions did not involve soliloquies from Shakespeare or Zanderzohn. It was enough that he got to be the one to tell them.

There were of course, other patients, including a regular of such extreme age she was by nature as addled as Frank and Alice Longbottom were by injury. Neville knew her own grandson had stopped visiting ages ago, and thought perhaps she saw him as such, her outstretched arms an indicator of needing to have and give a hug.

"There, there. I'm sorry I don't visit more often."

About five hours in, what can only be called a miracle occurred. As Neville Longbottom would learn, miracles are fleeting things, and deucedly hard to prove, or more accurately, to not have dismissed out of hand. Those who witness miracles are historically subject to immense pain and even ridicule. This would, in his case, make all the difference in the world. For pain and ridicule had often been the two other members of his own personal trio.

Neville was in the ward, sitting next to his parents, with seven staff members about when the miracle occurred. He almost didn't catch it. He saw his mother sit up, and prepared for the ciphering game to see if she indicated a need for sheets being changed, to give him a bottlecap or other keepsake, or point to her parched mouth.

"Could I Have A Glass Of Water?"

His father nodded.

"Yes, That Would Be Nice."

Neville almost blithely took in their request.

"Yes, certainly I'll fetch..."

By the time his mind was able to fully process what had happened, every eye in the place, even to some of the other patients, was locked on Frank and Alice Longbottom, formerly noted Aurors and now noted casualties of the tense aftermath of The First Wizarding War. For they had done the impossible, or at least the unheard of.

"What did you just say? How-did you just say it?"

Growing numb, he fetched them their water. Behind him, the staff was going wild, and another visiting relative looked hard at their mind-lost loved one, then began to cry. In the next twelve hours before any word of this leaked out, it seemed like every medical staff member in Mungo's had been in to see the Longbottoms. In the midst of it, Neville made an uncomfortable choice that would aid him later.

At no time in this did the miracle recur.


	2. Chapter 2

Neville's Island

By Rob Morris

Chapter One – The Accused Is An Innocent Man

"I have friends, you know."

It was a brusque sort of statement, and not at all what one would expect from Neville Longbottom. In fact, Neville thought after making it, it was almost a Malfoy-sian turn of phrase. Given what he was up against, though, Neville doubted he would resent a Malfoy using it in the exact same circumstance.

"I rather doubt that, but on the off-chance you do, you'll have need of them. Young man, these are very serious charges. Abusing the helpless is a grave matter."

The Head Director of St. Mungo's, Longshanks Doxby, was that rare sort who both looked difficult and was actually even more difficult. While this sort of person had never been rare for Neville, most who newly dealt with Doxby had this type of reaction.

"I did not abuse my parents."

"Well, what do you call what happened, then?"

"I'd call it a miracle!"

"Well around here, Young Mister Longbottom, miracles are always suspect. You wouldn't be the first to ham-fistedly try and enhance the circumstance of our long-term patients, but for this we have no tolerance!"

Neville forced himself to the same calm that got him through the Carrows' beatings and other thinly-veiled attacks during the Occupation. Somehow though, now, it was actually more difficult. He could allow himself to hate the Carrows and snark back at them, even if at a cost. He didn't have this luxury with Doxby. The Carrow siblings were simply thugs that enjoyed their work; they could honestly not be accused of being overly self-important.

"Exactly what is it that I am being accused of?"

The man's face drew so far back in apparent indignation, Neville briefly feared him being a werewolf.

"Are you serious? Are you that much in contempt of laws and propriety that you won't even…"

Neville took the risk and cut him off.

"You have-gone on endlessly about the horror of what I've supposedly done, and the consequences of what I've supposedly done, but you've left important details out of that mix."

"Such as?"

"Such as just what is it I supposedly did? Because whether I am the most upright man or you will ever meet or more thieving than Mundungus Fletcher himself, I have not the slightest idea what it is you're blathering about!"

Doxby nodded with a sneer and almost smiled.

"All right—you want to play it this way—I can be a sport."

Neville had severe doubts about that statement, but chose to keep silent about them in hopes to end this farce even a moment sooner.

"Sir—your accusation, please."

"You're a cheeky one."

"I said both Sir and Please."

Neville was slowly ratcheting this man down in his estimation. Even the difficult he had known were starting to seem better in memory, compared to Doxby.

"Well, you'll not be so "pleased" with yourself when the Aurors arrive to charge you with casting Imperius upon your own parents!"

Neville Longbottom was very much his own man, and the three legendary friends who often overshadowed him would be the first to defend this idea, perhaps even fiercely. But upon hearing Doxby's accusation, he forgivably channeled one of these three.

"Are-you—_MENTAL_?!"

"You listen-"

"NO—you listen, and do nothing but listen. My parents are the victims of psychopaths using Unforgiveable Curses to destroy their minds. I honestly can't remember ever hearing their voices before just hours ago. I can't even be certain those were their voices, and not the result of some sick prank. My point being, in the light of how they've suffered, do you honestly believe that I would hurt them at all, especially by using another Unforgiveable?"

Doxby did not disappoint Neville's view of him.

"Well, it seems obvious that you have, so that's that for that, isn't it?"

Neville stopped himself from throttling this idiot by focusing his hope on something the man said earlier.

"What manner of insane troll logic are you engaging in? How can you—how did you arrive at such a conclusion?"

Doxby smiled a much-too-satisfied smile.

"Firstly, you are the most obvious suspect. A boy who's spent years pining at the side of parents who will never acknowledge him. Secondly, you were the only one in the room when this anomaly occurred outside of my own staff-or are you going to accuse one of them of doing this?"

"They were in the room, but since that doesn't fit your fanatic's narrative, go on."

"Snark all you want, boy-we have an eyewitness to your crime."

Neville sat down at this crowning bit of ridiculousness; an eyewitness to a crime that, not only did he not commit, but that he was fairly certain hadn't even _been _committed.

"Nothing to say, Mister Longbottom? Cocksure confidence all evaporated, when your crime in my facility is exposed to the light of day? Do you wish to state out a confession?"

Neville fought off his daze.

"Let me hear this witness."

"Why? So you can Imperius him as well? Now, I'll be kind one last time-do you wish to confess to your crime, and make things easier on yourself?"

Inside himself, Neville saw even his quaking, fear-ridden eleven-year-old self standing resolute against this onslaught.

"I'll wait for the Aurors, thank you very much. They have the right to do what you are posturing and playing at."

A red light appeared out of a ball that flittered into Doxby's office. He smiled anew and nodded.

"You won't wait long. The Auror is here."

Doxby's assistant ran in, not looking as confident as when he demanded Neville follow him to Doxby's office.

"Sir-the Auror is-not what we expected."

Doxby was no less dismissive with his staff.

"Is he an Auror?"

The assistant shrugged.

"He does have all the identifiers—but he's someone important. _Very important_. We may wish to drop this investigation."

"We most certainly will not! How formidable could this Auror be?"

"Well, he-he—"

Neville glanced into the hallway, then grinned.

"The words you're searching for are – He Saved The Whole Bloody World. Oh—and did Mister 'Just Walk This Way and Keep Quiet' here mention that the Auror brought associates? They're also important."

As newly-minted Auror Harold James Potter entered, Neville's accusers seemed to drop several levels in certainty. Their confidence was offered no comfort as Ron and Hermione joined their friends in the office.

"Why—why are they here?"

Harry, who had looked a bit unsure in the ruins of the Great Hall (not to mention regarding him and Ginny) now looked every bit in his element : Confronting an officious fool who had tried to threaten someone he cared about. The story of Dolores Umbridge's arrest (and resistance of said arrest) not a day before was already making its way into legend.

"They are my duly deputized associates. Miss Grainger knows more about more things than most people have forgotten, and Mister Weasley is well-versed in the laws and customs of governmentally-governed entities like St. Mungo's. For myself-"

Harry leaned forward over the desk, and even though he wasn't the tallest man on Earth, he must have seemed this for at least a moment to the pushy administrator.

"—I bring a deep suspicion of people in authority who proclaim guilt with sweeping proclamations and who act in contempt of procedure."

Doxby's initial tasking was completed by Neville, who nodded at him.

"Did I mention I have friends?"

The man struggled fast to reassert his imagined position.

"We have a witness to his crime!"

Harry pulled back, but in no way could this be seen as retreat.

"That witness is the only thing keeping me from hauling you in for these shenanigans. Point of fact, Director Doxby—I try and gain confessions. You Do Not. Ever. As to you, Neville, I'm sorry, but I must try and gain the measure of this witness's credibility. If he somehow is telling an at least plausible story…"

Neville let Harry off the hook.

"It's all right, Harry. At least if you haul me in, I'll know there's some reason behind it, and not these half-baked assumptions."

Doxby looked ready to respond to that, but Harry caught him with a glare that had turned back a Dark Age.

"Thank You, Neville. Now for our experts. Mister Weasley, does this makeshift detention and interrogation affect my ability to bring in Mister Longbottom, if I am forced to by available evidence?"

Ron shook his head.

"Wish I could say yes, Harry. Though it could play havoc with trial proceedings, if anything Neville said to them was used against him. Now, if you're asking me how they should have proceeded, here it is. Barring proven acts of violence or disruption—say if Neville had slugged his folks, or one of the attendants—the whole thing should have been referred to the Aurors. They can detain a suspect almost anywhere in the Wizarding World, so long as they inform local authorities."

Doxby thought he had his point back.

"We did inform the Aurors, obviously!"

Ron shut him down with a small smirk that must have cut him deeper than Harry's glare.

"Yeah. You also held him here and asked all kinds of 'When Did You Stop Hitting Your Kids?' questions. That is something you had no right to do. Now, Director, if he were all that dangerous, and out of control—do you really think a stern talking-to is going to break him? Now, did you think he was potentially a menace?"

The question was so matter-of-fact and absent all snark, Doxby's defenses were lowered.

"Well, yes, anyone who would do what he's done is clearly a great menace, perhaps even a threat to himself."

Harry was past bothering with educating this man, so the word 'alleged' was never even brought up in retort. An almost invisible glance at Ron told him to proceed.

"So in your view, he was this terrible horrid menace? Alright. Then doesn't grabbing and holding him present a danger to you and your staff? I mean, you're making him out to be this monster, this animal. So what happens you corner a wild animal? You don't. You keep him calm and unawares and you wait for animal control."

"We did not grab him."

Neville nodded.

"He's right, Ron. They did not grab me. I will say, though, the fact that all exits were blocked by attendants who average the size of a small Quidditch stadium did lead me to believe I shouldn't try and go anywhere."

"Understood, Neville. Harry, he ultimately called for your offices, so nothing can be done there. But he rode the straw down on this broomstick, legal-wise. I think that Minister Shacklebolt might want to reprimand the Director, and have him send round the Owls with a memo to staff at St. Mungo's about handling instances where an Auror might be needed."

Doxby got up and pointed at Ron.

"You're such an authority. How did you come by all this supposed legal knowledge?"

Hermione appeared to be listening very intently as Ron answered, as this question was on her mind as well.

"My father has worked for the Ministry his whole life, and now works directly for the Minister himself. He was in the thick of both wars, as was my Mum. My one brother served two Ministers, even if he and they tended to be prats. Another brother travels all over, so he knows the laws here and there. I've heard of arrests and procedures made over casual dinner-chat. My first formal event was for an Auror taken in the line of duty. The best friend I will ever have faced a Wizengamot hearing, so I have heard chapter and verse as to why that should never have happened. I know the law, Mister Doxby. I know for a fact that I know it better than you. And now, one bit of non-legal advice : Don't challenge this witch. What I just did by soft knowledge, she will do to you tenfold by way of hard facts."

Hermione eyed her man in a favorable way, then addressed the friend from whom their authority in this instance derived.

"Harry, I would like to hear from Mister Doxby's witness."

She met Neville's eyes, and while he'd always thought she was pretty, Neville was struck by how Hermione's presence was a reassuring one. She would never be his girlfriend, but he doubted that could have increased the ferocity with which she and the others defended him as a friend.

"Good luck in that, Hermione. He thought I'd Imperius the witness as well."

"Neville, you realize no one has been Imperiused, right?"

Ron cut in once more.

"Try telling that to the Senator from Wisconsin here."

The others stared at him. He shrugged.

"By mistake, I grabbed a Muggle book while I was on the run, called 'Witch Hunt'. It was about some bloke from Wisconsin named McCarthy. He and the Director would have gotten on just fine. So-can we get a witness?"

Doxby suddenly looked authoritative, even contemplative.

"No, no. I wish to protect him from the pre-drawn conclusions and character assassinations of this sham investigation."

Neville shook his head slowly.

"You're one to talk of shams."

Harry slammed his hands down on Doxby's desktop.

"So you will not produce a witness?"

"I just said I wouldn't."

Harry nodded.

"Very good. Neville, you are free to go. Mister Doxby, if you will not produce a witness, then that witness is a fraud, a fiction. An expensive fiction which you will pay for in the coin of Azkaban."

As was easy to guess, that did it for Doxby.

"Well, now that I think upon it, he did express a desire to be heard. But I will not permit him to be abused. He is a treasured member of our staff. He-"

Doxby turned to his assistant.

"Who is he again?"

After being reminded of the name of his treasured staff member, Doxby ordered the man brought in. To Harry's eyes, the attendant looked like a member of the Gaunt family rejected for being slightly more civilized. The emphasis in this case being on the 'slightly more' part of the equation. The man looked both old and young, but it was a decrepit old and a callow young, and neither look suited him, either by itself or in tandem.

"He raised his wand, shouted that awful Unforgivable spell, and cursed Potty-Mouthed at his poor parents until they uttered the few words that satisfied their snake of a son. That's my story, and I will stand with it. So-may I go now?"

Hermione whispered something to Harry, and he nodded.

"Thanks for confirming that. Now, Mister-"

"Brosnan Lazmorry, Auror. Just when will you be bothered to do your duty and take this fiend in? I'm not the sole witness, you know. Just the one who saw and heard the most of this pathetic crime."

Lazmorry pointed to a nurse who had joined them.

"Margorie here saw a lot of it as well. Or will you, in the name of aiding your friend, dismiss us all?"

The nurse, sluggish until then, sprang to life.

"Yes. He cannot dismiss us all-all of us."

Harry sighed.

"No, Mister Lazmorry, I dare not dismiss any of you. But with that said, I must have the truth. Mister Doxby, have you any _versaterium?"_

_The Director for a moment seemed to be all business._

_"No. The supplies we had were confiscated by orders of former Minister Thicknesse. We've yet to be able to replenish it."_

_No one there-almost no one-liked the thought of what the corrupted Ministry probably did with this supply. Harry made a mental note to check on any uses by Umbridge, though, he reasoned, she made her own truth as she needed it. Neville, feeling forgotten at his own hearing, spoke up._

_"Harry, I'll take versaterium if that's what you want. But I don't know anything to confess."_

_Harry looked at Hermione._

_"Is there nothing else we can use?"_

_Hermione snapped her fingers._

_"I have it! Nurse, prepare 50 CC's of sodium pentothol ."_

_The nurse began to move, but became confused._

_"Is..that right to do?"_

_Ron caught a look from Harry, and chimed in._

_"It's completely legal in cases like these."_

_Margorie smiled._

_"It is completely legal, isn't it? I..I..."_

_She turned to, and unwittingly on, Lazmorry._

_"Should I go and fetch it, then?"_

_Reaching for his wand, Lazmorry found four aimed dead square at him. Harry moved the point of his in._

_"Mister Lazmorry, I place you under arrest for association with the murderous rebellion led by the late Thomas Riddle. You're actually lucky we found you first. Because whatever of your fellows are still out there, they want you for ditching them during the battle of Hogwarts."_

_The nurse fainted as Lazzmorry stopped controlling her, this as his rage grew._

_"Killers of the Dark Lord! Murderers of the dream!"_

_Neville cold-cocked the slimy false accuser._

_"Damned straight we are-and proud of it."_

_Doxby seemed apoplectic._

_"He was a witness in an investigation!"_

_Hermione bound the unconscious fugitive while she responded._

_"You don't think that his status as a Death Eater controlling your staff to accuse the man who rendered Riddle as mortal would have any bearing on the investigation?"_

_"I THINK-that the Longbottoms were Imperiused by their son, and this man's own possible crimes do not unmake what he saw."_

_Ron shook his head._

_"Take note, you stupid man-I gave you fair warning."_

_As Ron had predicted, Hermione moved to ruthlessly crush Doxby's arrogance and presumption with extreme prejudice._

_"Did you or did you not hear me tell Neville that no one was placed under Imperius - except those bespelled by Lazmorry himself, to support his accusation?"_

_Hermione turned to the nurse, Margorie._

_"Ma'am? How far under Mister Lazmorry's control were you?"_

_Margorie sneered a bit._

_"I'm hardly a Ma'am, thank you. No-sorry, dear-I'm brittle after that frog used me. Well, he didn't do it quite right, did he? I was fighting it, but it was like clawing at the wind-and just what is Sodium Pentothal?"_

_Hermione smiled._

_"A Muggle truth-getting formula that a Wizarding World nurse would know nothing of. That showed me clearly you were under Imperius, when you went to fetch it without immediately asking what or why. Your confusion showed me that Lazmorry had cast it sloppily."_

_The young witch glanced at the increasingly humiliated Director._

_"Badly cast Imperius is easy to spot, you know. Do you know what else is such easy arithmetic? The futility of trying to cast Imperius-which is to say, seizing the self-control of-two people whose minds have left them, and *therefore* have no self-control to seize. If Neville were the most powerful wizard of all time by every means of measurement we know, he still could not have made his parents so much as rub their foreheads to wipe off their sweat. If Riddle and Dumbledore had together worked years on the study and practice of Imperius, all while being advised by Merlin's Shade-the results would be all the same." _

Doxby arose in a huff, which is to say his seemingly natural state, and gestured to a pile of periodicals that moved to his desk. After a bit of sorting, he opened one to a certain article.

"Is that so, my young Witch, so knowledgeable after seven short years? Well, let us see what a wizard of nearly seventy years training, all spent studying Unforgiveables and their long-term effects, has to say about it, then. I'll assume you are familiar with the works of Doctor Billingsley Cleaver?"

Hermione was a warrior for whom the remaining battle consisted of watching her opponent continually impale himself without mercy or let.

"Of course."

By this point, there was no one in the room besides Doxby himself who wasn't wondering how the same world that spawned geniuses must needs produce people like the Director.

"Then you will also be familiar with his most recent work on the subject, which categorically confirms-what the-the limits of Imperius upon those enfeebled of mind and wits? How—I read this article from prologue to end-notes when it first came out two years ago!"

All four heroes spoke as one in a very bored tone of voice.

"Read the update listing."

Doxby did just that, and Doctor Cleaver's voice spoke words that broke Doxby's own voice, not to mention his spirit.

*This article owes a significant and fundamental correction to our correspondence with Hermione Jean Granger, Hogwarts, Sixth Year. Proof positive that even a scholar can still learn his lessons anew.*

After three minutes staring at the equivalent of his own head on a plate, Doxby looked up.

"The charges against Mister Longbottom are withdrawn and forgotten."

Harry grinned only slightly.

"Oh, they are hardly forgotten, Director. St. Mungo's sterling reputation in caring for the injured and chronically ill, and even the dying is matched only by its positively dismal reputation for checking who they hire! This isn't the first Death Eater ever found on staff here, and hardly the first ne'er do well period. Now, one way or another, I must recommend action on this situation to the Minister For Magic. May I tell him at that time you have agreed to my terms for ending this matter?"

Doxby looked on the verge of dry heaving, but somehow kept steady.

"Your terms?"

Harry looked at Neville, nodded, and then went right back to glaring at Doxby.

"First, foremost and absolute is a true and full investigation into the odd occurrence with the Longbottoms. As they are Aurors fallen in the line of duty, my office has an especial interest in this, even outside of Neville's friendship with ourselves, and with, if I may repeat again, Minister For Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt. You might also take in that several hundred sets of parents of Hogwarts' students consider their children's enduring lives to be the result of Neville's leadership during the Occupation. Among those are doubtless other powerful people, and just plain folks who can make their voices heard in his favor."

Ron stuck the knife in a bit further.

"Even some of the less loony Slytherin students say his defiance kept the Carrows off of them, so don't look for a base against him there."

Harry called for his second point.

"Check your staff, Director. Check it over with an eye rinsed of the tint of arrogance and pride of place. Another such episode as this, and I think that Director Doxby will envy poor Pyrrhus for his fate, because you will have not even a bittersweet victory to salve your nerves."

Before the four left with the Aurors' newest prisoner, Neville looked back at his would-be interrogators.

"Good luck with my Grandmother."

Doxby gave his assistant an inquisitive look that the clerk met with a fearful shake of the head, as regarded this comment.

To coin a phrase, in terms of wrathful retort, they had not seen anything as yet.

After a check on the Longbottoms (for whom there was neither commotion nor change from their mostly usual state), the four disapparated back to the safe point near Hogwarts, which Neville immediately noticed was much closer to the castle than was normal.

"They adjusted the anti-spell perimeter?"

The Trio took their friend aside where they would not be noticed, though an absence of regular activity still dominated what was once an always-bustling entry area. Ron leaned in close to Neville.

"That was actually closer than we wanted. We mustn't let on. Neville – nothing works right now."

Neville shrugged.

"Nothing covers an awful lot, don't you think? Define nothing for those of us who spent our first day of victory in bureaucratic detention."

Harry looked very uncomfortable indeed.

"Hermione and I were having an—animated—discussion about some volunteer work she volunteered us for-"

Hermione's uncharacteristically sheepish face and lack of response told Neville quite a bit about this 'animated' discussion as Harry kept on.

"—in any event, I unthinkingly followed her up the stairs to the girls' side—and was not cast back. Headmistress McGonagall immediately made an excuse as to why this was, and she really sold it. It's like Ron just said—a great many of the spells we've come to depend on were shattered during the Occupation, and more again during the last battle. Getting them back to the level they were will take time. Some things may just never come back."

Neville had been embarrassed by several pranks that took his clothes, or at least some of them. But at this news, he felt positively naked.

"How far has this gone? Can we be plotted now?"

Whatever Hermione had done to earn her dear friends' wrath, she seemed to revive at the sound of a logical question.

"No. Those runes were cast by Salazar Slytherin himself, and were kept clear of blood so even his own sons couldn't undo them, let alone his last descendant. Slytherin's utter paranoia about Muggles is sadly our only comfort here. Even some of the shifting stairwells—well, they don't quite meet up anymore. Carrying your broomstick around is a wise idea."

Neville felt utterly torn apart by the week's events, and so was forgiven a sarcastic tone of voice.

"Well, then? Anything else? Should we also expect the return of Arthur and Merlin, with Elvis to serenade them?"

Ron wondered at one of those names, but his question was cut off by Harry's response.

"Remember the discussion I mentioned? Well, it seems Hogwarts is down on assistant instructors. Our teachers lost some of their own, and much of their help-staff to the war. So certain able Seventh-Years are being pressed into that service—by someone more fond of being helpful than thinking things through."

Hermione rose up at this.

"Harry, you can't be an Auror right now, anyway. What were we all going to do until things settle down? Attend parades in our honour?"

Harry was standing his ground, and his upset was having a direct impact on Hermione's usual sureness of movement, with Ron caught firmly between them. Seeing the people he looked upon as pillars shake and shudder was not something Neville relished.

"I never said it was a bad idea. What I said and what I say and what I will say is a bad idea is signing our names to a scheme we never even discussed, just so you could feel helpful."

"I felt helpless! Helpless as the place we've all called home—not just you Harry—was falling down around our ears!"

"No you don't. I love you, but I'm not in love with you, so don't imagine I'll defer to avoid an argument. You had no right to place us all in that position before talking it over. That we might well have chosen it doesn't matter. At my worst, I tried to include you two in every choice we made while on the run. Even when I really had no clue myself, I did my best to try and explain myself. Why couldn't you pay me back that same courtesy?"

Ron was a good deal gentler in his tone, but it only made his concurrence obviously hurt Hermione all the more.

"Or me. Urgency—it only goes so far to explain things, Hermione."

Neville felt a natural tendency to pull back when the three got in this deep. But perhaps in a cue from his parents, he instead held forth.

"Alright, enough! Past enough, even!"

He looked at Hermione.

"You let good intentions and your smarts make you blind, just like with Harry's Firebolt. You were right then, and you're likely right now, but part of being right is explaining it, and you have as little patience for those around you in that way as you did for Doxby."

He looked at Harry.

"You, Mister Hero, gave her the confidence and strength to be this arrogant and dismissive, and yet you are constantly surprised when she does things like this. You want to know why she's like this, Harry Potter? Because while she doesn't want you, she does want to be like you. She wants to be that plunge-ahead, damn-the-mines, full-steam, full-throttle grab-Riddle-by-the-neck and taunt him all the while champion, but that is the one thing she has no talent at. So please adjust to how you know she is. Again, she may not be the girlfriend the press liked to say, but she aims to be the sister you never had."

Ron showed that a show of brains doesn't mean constant use of them.

"Like that's a protectant."

If Ron had wanted to avoid Hermione's ire, he hadn't even thought about dodging Neville's. This was to prove a mistake.

"Ron? Is this by chance protectiveness of the little sister who would have married Harry on the train tracks when she was only ten? The one who was so distracted by her crush, she ignored a lifetime in a magical family and picked up an unknown artifact? The one whose-encounter with Harry—you could have stopped, had you been thinking with the right one? Due to the year I spent with her, I can say she likes her brother a lot more than you might think—except that he keeps thinking his love of Harry Potter is somehow connected to her own. This is the one and only confidence of hers I will betray, Ron—they are separate things. Let her be hurt and let her hurt him – at a remove from everything else."

The two wizards let their distaff end speak up, rather than vent more spleen.

"Any more problems of ours you wish to resolve, Neville?"

Neville shook his head.

"No—and don't think for a second I'm not grateful for what you did today. In fact, I steamrolled your concerns so I could get back to mine. I need your problem-solving genius—and yes, it is genius—to help tell me why my parents came back to life like that."

Disjointed before, the three began to move back in unison. It was not a unison Neville would care for.

"Neville, I did order Doxby to conduct a full investigation."

"Harry? Tell me you trust that raging moron to tie his own loose laces."

"It could be years before you see an answer, chum."

"Thanks, Ron. But I know that, and I figure the brainpower you three bring to the table can only shorten that span."

Hermione, who'd had the hammer dropped twice on her, now did so against Neville, not out of payback, but out of concern.

"It's perhaps best if you treat this as the freak occurrence it likely was. Unless and until it recurs, we haven't anything to go on, in any event."

Harry moved from complete dismissal of the subject, just not by very much.

"We've a lot on our plate. Let us think about it, and try to give you a better answer when we're not all standing asleep."

To his credit, Neville tried to turn his concerns off of himself alone.

"So why can't you be an Auror, when you were one just now?"

Perhaps regretting his harsh words before, Harry let an anxious Hermione explain.

"It's logistical. Till the most rabid of the fugitive Death Eaters are taken in, any Auror team he was assigned to would spend more time protecting him than not, and enable those less fanatic in a fugitive group to escape while their psychos went after Harry."

This made sense to Neville. Harry would never shy away if only his own neck were on the line, but if his presence caused danger to others, he would wait to see action.

"I can do things like aid your case, and even protect a certain family awaiting trial—yes, that certain family, and they are here, keeping out of sight. But the real action is a bit off for me. So—I suppose I would have agreed to help teach—had I been asked. I ask that of you now, Neville. Professor Sprout needs her best student to step up. How about it?"

At this scene, Hermione looked both glad and chastened. Neville's words hit home, and they would really solve nothing at all. Yet they were still well-chosen words.

"I'll head straight to her offices, Harry. Like the lady said, what else are we all going to do? Most of the career advisors are dead or in hiding."

Ron held his nose.

"No offense, Neville—but not straight there."

Hermione waved away an odor.

"Yes—I'd been trying to ignore it, but you need to bathe."

Harry confirmed the malodorous verdict.

"I think you really sweated it out in that fool's offices. Sprout knows where you were, and she'll wait for tomorrow."

Neville blushed.

"Guess I don't know my own strength, eh?"

They walked Neville some way towards the baths, only to encounter someone they knew and dreaded.

"Evening, all. Out and about this late?"

All stared in horror at Filch.

"Ahh—Mister Filch. We were just-"

"That is to say, we were—"

"Just going to meet with—"

"Lost track of the time, after-"

Filch calmly raised a hand.

"Save it, please. Though it confirms my opinion that the Headmistress has taken total leave of her senses, the sad fact is, and the sad fact remains-"

He looked at them with greater disdain than ever before, this for good cause in his mind.

"-you are all now instructors at Hogwarts, and instructors know no curfew, and may go where they will."

If the four needed any indicator of how things had changed in such a brief time, this would have surely served. Neville thanked his friend, found the baths and made sure he was alone.

Taking off one of his socks, he took a cloth from his pocket and placed it inside the sock, secured it like it was the greatest treasure on Earth, then went to bathe. Needing the relaxation as badly as the cleansing, he secured the sock in a container made for pungent herbs and made his way to Sprout. She was still up, attempting to coax lesson plans from a ruin made by one of the Carrows' pranks.

"Longbottom. I hadn't expected you tonight, after-oh, my boy, such a strange thing to occur. You needn't be here right now, Neville. You should grab whatever sleep a day like this permits you."

Neville checked again for anyone they knew passing by, when in fact there was no one about. But he needed exactly this privacy.

"Professor—may I borrow one of your—more advanced books on the green sciences?"

After a two-hour consultation on how he might aid a teacher who seemingly never needed it before an exhausting war, Neville indeed got the book he wanted, and put it near his sealed treasure. As he turned to undress inside a small room that was now all his own, an owl found him, dropped his message, and was away quickly.

"_Perfectly understandable why you got out before informing me of this—incident. Hateful little man—I wouldn't waste a spell on him. Neville, I frankly applaud you for letting this freak occurrence pass without whining or pouting or rejoicing in a false miracle that will never recur. Your parents are, frankly, the way they are, and the way they will be until the day they die. You asked for a proper investigation, which is, well, proper. Let that no-goodnik Director earn his purchase on the public teat, and make him properly document what we already know of this anomaly. You continue to impress me, my boy – GrandMum."_

Neville had just been praised, but almost wished for a Howler instead.

"Everyone seems to be saying that I should simply let this thing pass. That I should-"

He yawned loudly and said one word before a good sleep overtook him.

"Relent."

The next morning he awoke, six hours being like twenty to a man who'd kept watch against incursions for a year, with lives under his charge, with half an hour of pure sleep being almost more than he could allow. Sprout would be waiting for him to guide her First-Year Herbology Class while she stepped between two other years.

But also waiting for him was a note, written and delivered by hand.

*They are your parents. Do Not Relent For Anything.*

Neville once more secured his sealed treasure, and made plans to act on it that very night. But he could not help but be struck by the fact that, while everyone he knew was telling him to forget the small miracle he witnessed, someone unknown was urging him to keep to it.

"I don't know who you are or how you know of this—but I like your advice."


End file.
